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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27349852">Aim Your Arrow At The Sky</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/beautlilies/pseuds/beautlilies'>beautlilies</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Twilight Series - All Media Types, Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M, I am tired, Like lots of it, Pain, also, and eventual smut, and i provide, anna you too, because alice is a good soul, because i love them and they tell me what to do, because nano, jasper being emotional, lots of thoughts and feelings, miriam you owe me, not edited, these thots asked for it, this will be lots of feelings, willingly</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-07 01:40:14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>7,965</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27349852</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/beautlilies/pseuds/beautlilies</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The development of Alice and Jasper. What it is. What it was. What it will always be.</p>
<p>Or, the expansion of Every Version of Me that I was bribed into making.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Alice Cullen/Jasper Hale</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>13</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. The Start</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>It is too easy to blame Alice.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It is exceptional - his control, his ability to ignore every irrational impulse. Snuff out the flame of each arbitrary whim before it sets the forest aflame. He’s calculation and premeditation personified, instinctual survival and decades of combat has shown him the worst the world can offer, has shown him the consequences of any miniscule decision. He’s never not known what it means to be careless, lost in the wind of his thoughts and the current of his whims. It’s dangerous and leaves him both startled and infuriated to have succumbed to the very thing that could kill him, to follow Alice through each of her dreams and vague ideas and each little city that he’s never heard of and would have never found were it not for her.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He thinks that this is the thing she has been holding back - the one thing that could change everything for him. She’s oblivious in the hyperfixation and the next step to each and every one of her plans. Jasper wonders if the lapse in time where it feels as if her soul leaves her body, an empty, hollow shell left behind for him to guide through the shoe racks gently, is not what she says it is. He knows in some deep and irrational part of him - the emotional part of him, the part of him he didn’t think existed inside of him - that she tells him nothing but the truth, that all of her odd statements and each demonstration has proven itself to be true. She’s incapable of dishonesty and Jasper is incapable of being oblivious to it, but he still wonders if she’s not manipulating him when her mind leaves her and every bit of life is gone from her nimble fingers.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>That would be the easy answer. It is the only answer he has.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They are in Maryland. The remote country, almost uninhabitable. She’s always meticulous, always overly cautious about where she decides to set roots for a brief moment in time. The house she adorns in bright paint and new furniture is hardly bigger than a shed. He had asked about it in Philadelphia when she had shown him the small cottage she claims her own. Alice had shrugged her shoulders and kept her eyes downward, “I live in the future. It’s hard to have a home in the present.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When she was ready to leave, slightly sad and reminiscently grateful, she had held out her hand for him and asked if he was going to come with her. Jasper had an inkling that if he did not follow her, that if he returned to Peter and Charlotte, she would have never left this home in Philadelphia. “Why not,” he had told her, and he did not miss how excited she had been, how </span>
  <em>
    <span>relieved </span>
  </em>
  <span>and he knew then that everything she had told him was true. He had never spoken aloud how he had been unsure up until that moment if he were to part ways with her. She couldn’t read him, not really. It made him uneasy to know that she was aware the entire time that he could leave - that he </span>
  <em>
    <span>would</span>
  </em>
  <span> leave.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Except, it is not possible for him. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And he hopes that his fear is right - that she is hiding this untold power from him, that she’s keeping him tethered to her with help from an invisible hand. Jasper is not sure why that hope is fear masqueraded.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He’s always known the subtext of her infatuation. Hyper-aware of each touch that sends her into an emotional frenzy, of each drawn out syllables that makes her breath catch in her throat and eyes to light up with the brilliance of a thousand suns. She’s pure, untouched and unmarked by the harsh hands of fate and she refuses to cross every boundary that has been drawn since the moment she danced her way up to him in a small diner in Philadelphia. He can feel it thrumming inside of her - the frustration and the anxiety, the desire for it all to come as she has seen it for decades before he even knew her, the patience she reminds herself to have every time she catches herself letting her frustration out on one of her creations.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Maybe, he muses, that is why he did it. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She makes him feel safe. Respected.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Alice rambles. Jasper discovers it is easy to send her into an endless monologue about anything if he draws the syllables of her name out or feeds her the slightest bit of information about himself - his favorite color, his favorite singer, his opinion on a new color scheme she had been contemplating. He does it this time, he reasons, because he wants to see if his theory is true (it is, he refuses to admit that a crease forms between her eyebrows when she’s very passionate about something and he finds it so endearing) and not because the sunlight that filters in makes her look ethereal with each steady movement, an array of rainbows scattered with every flex of her fingers and point of her toes.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And as she rambles, Jasper thinks for a moment of what it could have been for them, in an alternate universe or two. Alice welcoming him home with a child on her hip and the other running about the yard. Jasper, free of scars and emotional baggage, showing her the best that Italy can offer, the finest Renaissance art, the rush of New York. Alice with a ring on her finger and the flush of humanity across her cheeks.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He aches for a moment. He aches for what could have been.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>That is the moment Jasper loses control.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She’s taken by surprise when he kisses her. He can hear her little gasp. Can feel her body tense with every second that passes that he isn’t ripping himself away from her in disgust, can feel the little flutter of her emotions when his hands come to cradle her cheeks, his thumb swiping over delicate cheekbones. She’s hesitant and cautious, careful not to overwhelm him with the sensation of her. She lets her right hand - the one she favors, because the scar between her left thumb and index finger makes it uncomfortable to write - rest on his arm, slowly and methodically returning his kiss. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Alice, Jasper discovers, tastes of sunshine and melted candies. She smells of lavender still in the field, of fresh laundry and running water. She’s the summer of his life. The only light he’s found to actually sustain him. She makes him feel something impossible and uncontrollable and he hates how much he hates her for that. Jasper hates how much he never wants this kiss to end. How much he wants it to lead to something more.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He’s not sure how long they stood there in this small room, her letters forgotten and the sun slowly setting in the distance. It’s Alice that moves away from him first, the one to give him a shy smile and he knows that she’s come to an understanding of him, of this, of </span>
  <em>
    <span>them</span>
  </em>
  <span> and he can feel something uncomfortably and unbearably painful in her soul when she speaks ever so softly, “I need to get to town. Beatrice is expecting me.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She does not come back until dawn the next morning. Her eyes are dull and sad, marigold startling in the darkness he’s kept her home in. Her greeting is the same as ever, the same smile that makes the corners of her eyes wrinkle slightly and her eyebrows rise in delightful surprise. Except, he can feel the undercurrent of it all - of her words and her routine, pinning and hemming and sewing and stitching and cleaning. She’s a web of interconnecting and interwoven lines of desperate anxiety and it drives him close to the brink of insanity to not know what is causing it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He does know. He </span>
  <em>
    <span>knows </span>
  </em>
  <span>but there’s something he doesn’t and that’s making it worse.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When he makes the decision to leave, three days have passed. Alice ventures into town once more, dresses in hand and small pieces of paper ripped and crumpled in her purse. She could find him if she wanted to, he reasons, passing state line after state line until he is in Canada. She could find him and demand an answer if she so wished, he tells himself. Until then he will stay close to the larger cities, the cities that won’t bring too much attention to the missing people who will never be found because no matter how much Alice insists he should consider it, Jasper will never allow himself to feed off of animals.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Maybe that’s why it hurts so much more. The solitude. The absence of her tiny feet making an absurd amount of noise. Her rambles about the importance of certain literature. Her argument that an important element to something would </span>
  <em>
    <span>not </span>
  </em>
  <span>look better in another color. The excitement over his decision to accompany her into town, to meet Beatrice and Patrick and to mingle with David and Theodore while she helps Louisa into her gown.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Because Alice never comes for him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s not the reason why he decides to murder five people. A family in Alberta sitting by a fireplace. It’s brutal and messy and he’s not sure how he allowed himself to sink this low, to slaughter three children without hesitation. To dismember their bodies when he is done with them and burn them to ash, to scatter that ash as far as he can. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s not the reason why he did it. But it’s the only reason he has. It’s the reason he hates. Jasper can’t decide if he hates that reason more than the alternative, the more likely of the two.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Alice is waiting for him when he returns. He’s still in the same clothes, covered in blood that has stained and oxidized. Stiffened his clothing to the point of uncomfortability. She has a bath ready for him, the water warm and a clean towel set aside. She discards his clothes and when he calls for her, she sits in the bath with him, ignoring the way the fabric of her dress clings to her body and becomes much heavier than intended, cradling his head to her chest while he sobs.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. The Mess</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Jasper with feelings? Unheard of if I do say so myself. Alludes to sexy times.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>The resolution is written for them. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There is the small cluster of freckles on the sharp protrusion of her hip bone. He finds a beauty mark on the inside of her thigh, just above the fold of her knee that he thinks is just small enough to miss were he not looking for these small pieces of her that no one has ever discovered. She finds a mole on the side of his back, a birthmark he’s forgotten is hidden on his collarbone, disguised under a sea of scars and lost in the black hole of eternal life. Jasper thinks the beauty mark just above her lip is endearing and he likes how it moves with each pull of her lips when she relaxes under his touch with a gentle sigh.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He finds that the discovery of each and every glimpse of her human life thrills him more than the soft mewls of his name, the way her back arches with each push and pull of his fingers, flick of his tongue, rock of his hips. He finds these discoveries when she hands herself to him, trusting in him and in his decisions. There’s that hope inside of her, and he likes the way it bleeds into his current as the water in the tub goes cold and the skin of his fingertips light themselves afire. Jasper won’t admit that her hope only encourages his own, his mind swirling with the risks and probabilities. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And he comes to discover that this resolution, this contract written in the universe and interwoven within the hands of faith is unavoidable. It is as permanent as his existence, as unchanging as his appearance, as warm as the kisses she leaves across the skin, the sting as her nails catch along his scars. In the moments he spends with her, wrapped in her arms and lost in the timely gasps of his name, Jasper thinks it’s possible, believes that he can give into the hands of fate and simply </span>
  <em>
    <span>be</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She surrenders herself to him. Time and time again. She leaves him to his thoughts when he seeks it, comes back to him when he traces idle patterns on the soft skin of her hand. He sets the boundaries, the tone of each encounter he seeks beneath her sheets. He is in control, in every aspect of this and he knows that it only solidifies the inevitable. With each gentle smile and every concession, Jasper thinks it might be possible for him to find what he is meant to. To find his happiness. His peace.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When it is over, Jasper is cruel. He ignores her attempts to discuss what has become of them. Pretends to not hear her pleads for an explanation, for a reason or an explanation. It’s only encouraged his decision to speak when necessary, small grunts and huffs of air. Alice frustration seeps into him the same way her hope did all those times he sought safety in her bed, but eventually, she finds her determination and holds onto it as tight as she can as she tries to navigate this current he’s dragged them under.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And she does. Happily. Because she wants him in any and every sense of the word. And he knows that Jasper can offer her the smallest of crumbs and she’d eat them happily, because she is simply grateful that he has not left her. That he has not rid himself of her and wrote off the time they spend together as nothing more than an occasional fuck. It is cruel but he cannot stop himself. He cannot break this unconscious vow to himself to never let her in, never give her the future she hopes against all things holy that will come to fruition.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He only does this - and he knows this in that emotional side of him he’s still in disbelief exists - because this is the only way Jasper can keep her safe. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>So it continues as such. He slips into her bedroom as often as he pleases, taking more than he could ever reciprocate. The only words he speaks are bland and cold, his touch avoidant and his demeanor aggravated in the days after she lets him between her thighs and into her arms. Each time the cycle repeats itself, he can feel her lose more and more faith in herself - in her visions, the prophecy of her life and subsequently his. Jasper wants to bring himself to care but he simply cannot. He refuses. He still catches himself tracking a scent from decades before him, vaguely reminiscent and completely different if he takes the time to decipher it like Alice encourages him to. He still looks over his shoulder with each move, with each venture away from and away with Alice. Sometimes, panic seizes his heart when he catches sight of Alice in the distance, a memory of an old flame in her place; it takes Alice a long time to learn how to coax him back to reality. Jasper is just thankful that she didn’t give up on that feat, that she thought him and their relationship worthy enough to warrant such delicate treatment and deliberate experimentation.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There is some decency left in him. Some sliver of him that suffocates with each act of his lips, each touch and each caress of his fingers against the smooth and delicate planes of Alice. Part of him - that part that is all-consuming, the one he’s grown so accustomed to he thought that’s all there was to him - hopes that with each time he slips into her bed, Jasper is killing every last ounce of humanity that’s clinging to his frozen over bone marrow, the valves of his heart, the remaining strings of virtue.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jasper thinks that Alice understands the likeness of his behavior. He’s always been able to read her, wide eyes of expression that leaves nothing to be misconstrued. She’s like the puppies she fawns over just south of Minnesota, eager and ready to please. A pathetic sort of desperation is evident in each word, in each plea for attention, tripping over her feet and over her words. He thinks that the look she gives him when he stands in the doorway of her room, the one with the wide eyes and the downturned look of her lips, tells him that she </span>
  <em>
    <span>does </span>
  </em>
  <span>know - how desperate she appears to him, how much he needs this, what he’s trying to do to them.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But that is too hopeful of him. Too weak of him to project everything he knows he needs to do on the fragile curve of Alice’s shoulders, the delicacy and the naivety in her voice. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Because no matter how much he wants this to end, there is an even bigger part of him that never wants it to end. Never wants to be without her tiny hand slipping in his. Far removed from the way his name sounds dripping from her lips. How her laugh sounds like a melody crafted just for him. How she encourages him with every small gift, wide smile and enthusiasm for everything. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And that is what kills him the most. No matter how hard he wants to pretend it is anything else, it will always be the way Alice’s heart breaks more and more. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And Jasper wonders if their resolution is not what she hopes it is.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. The Worst</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>I hurt my feelings. Jasper hurts Alice's.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Beth Lauren Grey is dead.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jasper has multitudes. A facet she discovers with each passing second that he continues to spend in her company, watching out of the corner of his eye how she measures and pins and hems before dancing to the other side of the room in search of fabric, an accessory, the one thing she knows is missing but can’t quite pinpoint what. She pretends not to notice how he hovers, how he is never too far away from her. Even if she is simply in the garden she is trying to coax back to life, only a few feet and a fragile wooden door between them, Jasper is never far. Watching. Waiting. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She gives him this. In an attempt to foster more of his trust, to spend more time with him. It thrills her to know that he hovers as such, that he is never too far away. She’s indestructible and he is more than aware of it, but he is still terrified of the demons in his past that he’s convinced are still searching for him, watching and waiting to strike when he least expects it. Alice tries not to draw too many connections to that, tries not to think of the significance of his hovering and his cautious hand and what his wary expression means for her and the state of their relationship. Still, she can’t help it. And she loves to know that he cares for her enough to worry about her well-being, no matter how small or how platonic it may be. It is something, so therefore, it is enough.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jasper comes to the many things she wants to experience. She sits with him in the very back of a church, checks in with him as much as she can without crossing one of his most sensitive lines. He presses himself against her back in as many department stores she seeks out, a hand on the delicate curve of her waist as he watches and observes and tenses at things only he is privy to. He abides with her wishes and shows her the way different colors and different fabrics look against his skin, delights in the way she fusses over each detail she wishes to change and how her eyebrows draw together as she sorts through the millions of ways she would make it better. He holds her bags, holds every door open for her and throws an arm around her shoulder when he deems appropriate, when he wishes to feel her skin against his in different circumstances. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It is no different this time. Alice found him at the door of this small cottage she deems her own, waiting for her to finish fussing with the hundreds of strands of ink black hair that never cooperate. “Are you coming with me,” she asks him, because even though she knows the answer, she still is waiting for him to break her heart once more. “It’s just to the farmer’s market.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If you don’t mind,” Jasper looks almost shy, insecure in his constant trailing, the shadow that he’s almost sure was never there without him. Alice loves how his lips quirk with this small flicker of insecurity, in his apprehensive disbelief that she has never found him smothering.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Of course not.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She leads the way. Not because he doesn’t know. He would be lying if he said he hasn’t memorized the exact layout of this small inconsequential town that Alice has claimed her own, each alley and each dark crevice committed to his memory the way he’s committed the few scars from her human life, small jagged little markings he wishes to know the source of. The way he knows each sensitive spot on her body. The way he’s privy to her most personal thoughts and wishes, the way he’s so consumed in them that they are almost his own. But he prefers to be the eyes of their duo, prefers to hang back only a foot or two to watch and to observe and examine every little thing Alice would never consider a threat, no matter how small or how vague. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He follows her into the farmer’s market. Trails behind her with each stall she stops at, each fruit and vegetable she weighs in her dainty little hands. Sometimes, she’ll ask for his opinion for the sake of maintaining appearances, at least that’s what he tells himself when he can feel her excitement spike at each rasp he can offer her. He knows it is so much more than maintaining their appearance to society, knows that she genuinely loves and adores the sound of his voice and that she wishes to hear it at all hours of the day. Jasper pretends not to notice, pretends that her thrill doesn’t warm something deep inside of him. He continues to give non-committal answers and she continues to skip down the stalls and make as much conversation that only Alice deems necessary. Jasper doesn’t mind, not really. He finds the sound of her voice comforting. Soothing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s only when she rests a hand on his arm ever so gently that he’s startled by how much he loves these casual touches. How much he enjoys how unafraid and how bold she is, insistent and persistent that he is harmless, that he would never in a million years ever raise a hand to hurt her. How she constantly tiptoes every line he has set to get himself accustomed to this, to her, to what could be. “Do you mind running to Lena’s,” she asks him gently. “She should be expecting me to pick up her granddaughters dress soon but I’m not done.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He nods before he can stop himself. “Sure,” and he doesn’t miss how her smile widens and she’s rocking on the tops of her feet with excitement.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ll meet you back home,” and he doesn’t miss how the thought of having a home thrills him. The idea of having a real home with Alice. A home in a far remote land - Italy, New Zealand, maybe if he’s feeling bold, maybe  the edge of Texas - where Alice can dance in the sunlight and spend the afternoons in wheat fields. Maybe he’ll help Alice with decorating, with hanging each set of curtains and each picture frame and each work of art that Alice deems satisfactory enough for their home.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Be careful,” he can’t help himself. She waves a hand and presses a kiss to his jawline, the farthest she can reach when standing on her tiptoes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Lena lives in the heart of this small town, an older home vaguely reminiscent of the peak of the early 1920s. He can easily picture it in its prime. Can easily picture the hundreds of people that will flow in and out of it. The hundreds of dances and parties that have been hosted in this once grand foyer, old wooden floors scratched and creaking under the weight of his cowboy boots that Alice begrudgingly lets him keep. She’s only the slightest bit surprised to see him, and he wonders if the reason she and Alice get on so well is because of their shared ability to never be surprised or be surprised for long. She rambles as Alice does, guiding him through this hall and that, taking him up a flight of stairs before she remembers with startling clarity just what Alice sent him for.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beth Lauren Gray is in the back room of Lena Rhodes home. She gives him a wide smile when Lena introduces him, shakes his hand with a thrill that’s odd and completely different from the kind that Alice sends to him. Her lips are small, pointed at the very peak and nearly disappearing in their slope downward. A button nose and lively cheeks, Jasper knows that Beth is beautiful to the average person. That she is desirable and sought after. That the golden hue to her hair only plays on the old American standard, accentuates the blue eyes everyone expects her to have. Her voice sounds like Alice’s, only that is high and reminiscent of a song, but it is not his song. It is not Alice’s song.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And maybe that’s where the idea comes from.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Would you like to come back to our home? Alice will be there by the time we arrive. She’ll be more than happy to go over what it is exactly what you want,” and he’s ashamed to coerce these two women into allowing Beth to travel alone with a man she’s never met. But he does. And he continues to as he shows her the way to the small home Alice has spent nights decorating and refinishing in hopes to find the best balance for their opposing tastes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He does not spot Alice throughout the way. Can’t detect the nuance in her emotional state that is so familiar and so foreign at the same time. Can’t hear her voice being carried in the wind as she continues to speak to anyone and everyone. He can’t find her scent by the time he’s far from town, and part of him panics. Millions of different scenarios that play out in his head, wonders vaguely if she has seen what he has done and decided to leave him to clean up the mess before she is implicated and her name smeared. Wonders if maybe she had found someone else, someone that is kind and someone that is worthy of her devotion. Jasper tries not to picture what he would look like, not now. Not ever. Not when a small sliver of him had hoped that person would be him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He decides to ignore it. Tries to force himself to stop looking for her in the distance. Tries to ignore the scent of a vampire nearly a century before them. Pretends that he isn’t alarmed when he finds the basket of produce dropped on the floor, fruits and vegetables scattered throughout the hall. He wants to panic. Wants to abandon Beth Lauren Grey and go off in search of Alice. And he thinks he might, thinks that no one can stop him from tearing up both the forest floor and the ocean floor in search of her. There will not be any portion of the Earth untouched, cities burned to the ground as he searches for his beloved Alice.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And as he decides this, Beth is no longer under his thumb. Her smile has returned. She’s willfully oblivious, choosing to ignore every obvious sign that she is in danger. When she discovers Alice is not there, she presses her lips to his own. Her hands cradle his face in a similar fashion, too close to the way Alice lets her hands rest on each of his cheeks, her thumb smoothing over the scars on the tops of his cheekbones. Jasper discovers that Beth is taller than Alice, more so with the heels that Alice insists is the height of fashion. She tastes of tart, a bitter pastry left on her tongue. Her kiss is harsh and rushed, all teeth and none of the softness, none of the gentle surrendering of her senses. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s why it is so easy for him to take Beth on Alice’s bed. To please her in much the same way he does Alice.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Even when he finally senses Alice in the distance. Even when she falters on her steps, when he can hear her choke on a sob as she stands clutching a tree as if it is the only thing keeping her from collapsing. He needs to do this, he tells himself, with each slam of his hips he repeats it to himself. He needs to do it for Alice. Needs to send her away before someone can think of manipulating her into becoming a pawn in an elaborate game of chess, before she is beaten and taken in the worst ways known to human kind.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And when Alice finally steps foot into her bedroom, Jasper snaps Beth Lauren Gray’s neck in half.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. The Trial</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>The aftermath of Jasper being an asshole.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>miriam i would like a new chapter of jalice hunger games please</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>There is nothing Jasper does that is unintentional.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alice has known this as long as she has known the color of the sky, the fire spreading through the long column of her throat as she fights each and every instinct to rip out the throats of hundreds of people, tear out major arteries and clamp down each person that comes across her path. It’s a given that she has always rationalized as another tactic, another way for him to keep himself alive. He’s spent an eternal life hyper aware of minute windows to disarm and dismember, and it’s an obvious natural consequence to the environment he was once fostered in. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s this thought that continues to hold her steady. A small sliver of hope - the chance for answers, the opportunity to speak of every unsaid and unspoken feelings between them. She’s aware that if she gives in to the petulant child inside of her, some piece of her humanity that still lingers, has never been nurtured and has never been heard, that he will leave without hesitation. Jasper will lash out, will look at her in the same horror she catches in the worry lines in his face when he thinks he caught the scent of someone that once tried to kill him decades ago. She thinks that he might cross that line - the one she knows he will never forgive himself for, because no matter how much he fights and denies, she knows he cares for her in a the same way she cares for her - if he feels that she’s a danger to him, even if he knows deep down that Alice would never allow him to suffer at anyones hands ever again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’s anxious, irked with her insistence to bury Beth Lauren Grey. Her funeral is less than, a small bouquet of wildflowers clutched between stiff fingers. A dress tailored with Beth and her proportions in mind, a soft lavender that compliments the golden hue of her hair. Jasper tries to not look at Beth, at the place his hands had been only hours before, the place where her heart would beat a steady, constant thrum. He tries not to think of Lena Rhodes frantically pacing her home, peaking out windows and asking around in search for her beloved Beth. His soul is crumbling, faster than it ever has, and he feels like he’s drowning in his misery and the guilt that threatens to trap him in the violent tide of this undiscovered ocean.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But Alice insists Beth Lauren Grey deserves this much from them. He cannot deny her that, cannot deny her anything no matter how differently his actions come across, how contradictory his heart and his instincts are, a war he’s never thought he’d be caught in. He knows it. Understands it. Feels it with every fiber of his being, the same part of him that craves to know every thought Alice has ever had, will ever have. He knows that he thinks the crease between her eyebrows is endearing, that the way she lightly chews on the edge of her nail when she reads a novel that has her so invested she refuses to read any faster than the humans she adores, wanting to draw out her enjoyment and her suspense as long as she can is hypnotic. He knows that he thinks the way she listens to every minute thought and sound with the intensity of a thousand suns is the most seen he’s ever been, the most he’s ever been listened to without the taint of death and war.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And yet, Alice has not been to a funeral. Has never thought to attend one throughout her many escapades of the country, small towns and smaller communities. He hates that the first time she’s standing at the foot of someone’s body to say goodbye is because of him. Hates that she looks uncomfortable and close to tears. Hates that he’s done this - torn apart a community, torn apart the heart of his beloved. Jasper speaks a prayer, tries to fight how </span>
  <em>
    <span>wrong </span>
  </em>
  <span>it is for him to recite a long forgotten saying. Asks Alice if she wants a minute to herself, so she can say goodbye - to Beth, to Lena, to this small life that she’s tried so hard to build with him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She shakes her head. She spares the small plot of land they designated for Beth a small glance out of the corner of her eye before she recites her ominous warning that they will come looking for them coming dawn. He wants to ask where they will go, wants to ask where she is leading them. But he can’t bring himself to speak the words, can’t bring himself to admit that this reality is his doing. Instead, he holds out his hand for Alice. Wants this one action, one small reassurance that she is not parting from him completely. And she looks at his hand with indecisiveness. He’s tried so hard not to feel her pain, closing himself off from the rapid switch of disbelief and heartbreak, betrayal in her voice and uncertainty in the small quiver of her lip. But he gives himself that taste, that reminder of Alice’s pain is his responsibility and he thinks he will collapse with the tornado that wrecks havoc in her tiny frame, feels as if he’s choking in an indescribable heartbreak. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alice takes his hand anyways and Jasper thinks that he will never love someone the way he loves Alice. No one could love Alice the way he loves her. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He leads her. It’s the least he can do. The least he can offer to try and mend her heart, to try and start this long road of making this entire catastrophic disaster somewhat better, to start trying to heal both her mind and her soul. He does not know the country the way that she does, only privy to vast expanses of land that has always been equated with death and more war. Does not know how to live among the humans that she adores, how to immerse himself in this culture of courtship and gender roles, a house that Alice chooses with him in mind, enough room for the hobbies he’s not even aware he has. But he wants to try. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He takes her to the plains. There’s nothing waiting for them. No house in the middle of nowhere, falling apart and waiting for Alice’s delightful touch to revive it. To bring it to a new era of warmth and love, with Alice in every decision. He knows he will be able to find himself in every one of her stylistic choices. Wants to experience those tiny discoveries for the rest of his eternal life. And when he finally comes to a halt, lost in this endless sea of brown, Alice pulls her hand out of his and speaks for the first time since she told him to clean himself up, that she will take care of Beth Lauren Grey.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I can’t stay with you right now.”</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. The Turnaround</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Jasper makes big decisions.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>It’s an infestation. The nature of the insanity that has sought comfort in the collateral damage that is left. Tiny insects that he cannot outrun, a cycle of delusional and manic nightmares that manifest in the gruesome reminders of the insanity that can wreck the fragility of the mind - because even though he is forever immortal, the mind is still delicate and Jasper constantly straddles the line of something too monstrous and something too docile. It’s a metaphor and it’s symbolic to the thousands of arcs that he has lived through and the developments he prides himself in having made in all of the years he has walked the earth and horrors he has witnessed. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>There’s breaks, a reprieve from the insanity he has brought himself to. Sunshine that peaks through dark skies and tumultuous clouds. It could be another metaphor, he thinks, and he wonders what else in life is a metaphor for the disaster that he incites and the pain that he leaves behind. They are short lived and no more than a minute, almost two, before he is submerged once more into delusions of Alice and Beth and Maria and every event that has ever happened, that ever could happen. It is a manifestation of his deepest fears. A reminder that his truth is right there. That he can taste it. That he can </span>
  <em>
    <span>feel </span>
  </em>
  <span>it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alice had been right. About all of it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There’s marks along his skin now. Violent red, bitter and angry. His nails are a point of contention, a source of fixation that Alice has. It is another reminder to him. Methods upon methods of destruction, inconsequential casualities to decades of torture and murder. He has nothing more than gruesome stubs for nails, torn off and ripped off and broken off. Alice wants to fix him, wants to keep him intact for when she presents him to those that she deems worthy. But he wonders in the midst of his clarity and the storm of every foundation he has for himself, he wonders how wrong he was. It’s another mark against his appearance and now he wonders what Alice wished to show him each time she took his hand and stared at what was left of his nails. He thinks, looking now at the marks he has given himself with what is left of his nails, that he should stop taking every one of her actions at face value.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It is a storm of self-loathing and a tide of self-hatred. Violent winds and frigid temperatures. He’s shown Alice as she is, delightful and beautiful in the confidence she exudes. A dazzling picture of warmth and excitement with her dark hair mused despite her efforts to tame the short and wild strands. She says his name. Holds onto his hand with a tight certainty. She’s beautiful and he thinks that he should spend the rest of his eternal life reminding her of it. And when he remembers - not for the first time - that she is not by his side, that his madness is brought by his own doing and his own refusal to trust in something not twinged with something dark and murderous, he aches and he doubles over with the force of his heart break. She is gone, her scent washed away from the earth, and Jasper knows that this was his intention. That this is exactly what he needed to happen - no matter if she comes back or not.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He thinks he loses himself completely in his resolution that she won’t come back to him when there’s a gentle touch to his cheek, hesitant and warm and so reminiscent of all the times Alice took his face in her hands with the most measured delicacy. Something strikingly close to a fever dream, a mirage - anything, everything, because he peels his eyelids back and he swears that Alice is leaning over him. His name on her lips and her voice is something soft, soothing and melodic and he thinks he is truly lost to this infestation of nightmares. She’s incessant, still, even in this state he is in, and Jasper thinks that there is nothing better than the sound of her persistence. Her persistence has brought him to his truth. It was him who chased his future away.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It doesn’t leave him. This warmth. The lightest pressure on his cheek. It keeps him grounded in this storm, a battle of willpower. A war of the two most integral and most opposing sides of himself. He’s slipping into neutrality, choosing to close his eyes and remember Alice in her delicate glory. How her smile gives him something close to butterflies. The slip of her hand against his own, proud and sure and so so tiny. Her laughter that kept him lost in this existential crisis of everything that he once knew and everything that he can stand to learn. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Everything she has ever said, everything she has ever meant, has always been true. Has always been their truth.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>How foolish of him to think otherwise.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The clouds part. The storm dissipates. He opens his eyes. Alice smiles.</span>
</p><hr/><p>
  <span>There is no handbook. An instinct that he hopes to discover does not exist. A sense of something ominous, almost comical. He thinks it ridiculous, this position he has found himself in. There is nothing to guide him as he brings himself closer, observes from a measured distance the first of his prey. Still, he is careful. Light on his feet as he watches. And when he strikes, he nearly recoils from the bitterness of the blood, the texture of the fur matting in his mouth.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The bear falls to his feet. Jasper struggles to not heave the blood back up.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His system is on fire. Thinks that there is something detrimentally wrong with this. There is something wrong with this single animal that he has chosen, that the first one to stumble across his path is sick with something wretched and awful. A cancer from humanity. Pollution from their rivers, poison in their land. Jasper is on fire and he thinks that he needs something to dull the pain. Needs to find another animal - another bear, another creature with four legs and horns on its head, Jasper does not care. He </span>
  <em>
    <span>hurts. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“Jasper.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He thinks he has found Heaven. Alice throws herself into his arms. Jasper sobs.</span>
</p><hr/><p>
  <span>He has a talent for literature. A profound understanding of language. A deep proficiency in the nuance of romance, the delicacy that must be extended and the desperation that has to strike at the crux of the heart. It is an art he has spent the high afternoon sunshine perfecting and it unnerves him how easily Alice leaves him speechless. How quickly her smile steals every word of every language that he speaks - seven, a source of pride now because it is her favorite number, her lucky one.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He tries to speak. Tries to tell her everything - an apology, another, a promise to never break her heart once more. He is damaged and incredibly scarred from the decades of war and it is inevitable that he will make mistakes, that the progress he makes will never be fast enough or simply </span>
  <em>
    <span>enough</span>
  </em>
  <span>. He needs time to heal on his own before he tries to start something so concrete as forever, he needs an opportunity to heal himself through his own teachings and his own findings because he will never burden her with the task of his recovery. He can’t give her everything she wants, everything that she needs, not yet but he’s willing to try.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And she gives him this tentative smile. Still reeling from death and destruction. She aches something raw and her heart is in tatters, but she loves him. Has spent over a dozen years searching for him. Waiting for him to slip into her life as easily as it was for her to steal his heart - and he knows now that it was easy, that she has owned his heart and his soul the second she flashed her brilliant teeth and ruby red lips, his name dripping like honey and her excitement too infectious. He’s belonged to her since he took his first breath on this earth, a century before her. Had he known who was waiting for him he would not have not spent so long in Monterrey, would have constructed that diner himself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He tries so hard to tell her all of this. But she has stolen his mind now, too. And Jasper doesn’t mind, not when her hands are pressed against his cheeks - in actuality, not a delusion he conjured in the midst of insanity and heartbreak, warm and solid and oh so delicate - and she’s telling him that she </span>
  <em>
    <span>knows</span>
  </em>
  <span>. She knows it, knows everything he means to say. Because he is awful at communication, horrible at trying to put his many thoughts and every nuance idea into conscience sentences. Even when he speaks, venomous and volatile, a cruelty as a form of self-defense, a mistrust and a hesitancy, he breaks her heart.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And he is left with nothing but non-committal sounds. Left with short gestures and clipped sentences because it is </span>
  <em>
    <span>safe </span>
  </em>
  <span>and he has never wanted to hurt Alice, even when he was so convinced he did. She understands him and his nuances. Never makes him feel anything less than loved, even when she aches with his words and doubts her worth. She knows him and she loves him and Jasper can’t express how much it means to him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He has nothing. A man of no possessions. Nothing to his name but this broken promise that he is going to </span>
  <em>
    <span>try</span>
  </em>
  <span>. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It is a delightful tale. A reminder that in this storm he has brought them, he has solidified himself to her. Sworn his soul to hers. She has led him for so long. A steadfast, a fortitude to seek safety in when the sounds of granite cracking and anguish pierce his memories. She has led him, has protected him for so long, it is only right he does the same for. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He shushes the doubts with his lips. Chases away the memories of anyone else with his fingers. He’s not good with words, not when it comes to Alice, but he </span>
  <em>
    <span>tries. </span>
  </em>
  <span>Tries in the way he is so careful to lay her out on the field. With each button that is slowly pulled from its loop. Barest of kisses. Lightest of touches. Even when she is keening for more. When she pouts and squirms until he gives in, just as carefully, just as delicately. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>When she falls into a rising crescendo it is just as high and just as melodic as her lullabies. She holds him close. Strokes the nape of his neck when he falls, too. Not all is forgiven, he knows, but when she smiles at him, Jasper knows he will happily spend the rest of eternity repenting for his sins.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
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